Advanced Materials

Copper Clad Laminates

TR-Clad™ Flexible Laminates

TR-Clad™ Flexible Laminates are the lowest dielectric constant, thinnest, and lowest weight copper/polyimide laminates available. Additionally, TR-Clad™ are the first copper/polyimide laminates from electrostatic dissipative polyimide.

TR-Clad™ (short for “Transmit/Receive-Clad”) is a fundamental building block for ultra-lightweight flexible circuits and flexible antennas. TR-Clad™ Flexible Laminates are starting materials from which flexible circuits and flexible antennas are etched with lithographic processes.

Lowest Dielectric Constant

First, TR-Clad™ exhibits a record low dielectric constant of 2.5, which is much lower than the dielectric constant of 3.4 to 3.7 reported for competitive materials of all polyimide construction. Such a remarkably low dielectric constant reduces cross-talk between circuit traces and provides finer feature sizes and allows for higher frequencies. This enables high data-rate applications and additional miniaturization, which provides for additional lowering of the final product weight.

Thinnest and Lightest Weight Copper Clad Polyimide Laminates

TR-Clad™ flexible circuit materials are the thinnest and lightest weight copper-clad laminates available. While several configurations of TR-Clad™ are available, our unique manufacturing processes enable the manufacture of TR-Clad™ as adhesiveless 2 micron polyimide affixed to 9 micron copper in the 29E and 29N grades. This is a full 64% thinner and 53% lighter than the typical “lightweight” grade of 12.5 micron polyimide affixed to 18 micron copper.

Electrostatic Dissipative Polyimide

TR-Clad™ Flexible Laminates are the first, and so far the only, copper/polyimide laminates with grades that are constructed with electrostatically-dissipative (ESD) polyimide. A low level of surface electrical conductivity (10^8-10^12 ohm/sq) is required in many applications requiring ESD functionality to prevent static charge buildup that damages sensitive microchip circuitry affixed to the TR-Clad™ portion of the flexible circuit.